


The Return

by gowerstreet



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Brief allusions to hurt/comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor canon divergence, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 03:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21500746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gowerstreet/pseuds/gowerstreet
Summary: Holmes lies awake after the events of The Empty House, finally understanding the nature of love
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40
Collections: Holmestice Exchange - Winter 2019





	The Return

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).



It seems that the darker spirits of this world have turned away from us tonight, their eyes focused on other, wearier souls to destroy. The faint glow of the streetlamp beyond the glass paints your skin as you sleep beside me in comfort and safety, having escaped major harm.

\----

Until meeting you, I had believed that my own heart had no purpose but to force the blood around my body. It did not seem to have been built to burn with love. 

My steadfast, practical, confident doctor. The way your hands and eyes sought out my injuries, both visible and concealed, and how you sought to heal them all. You felt like the other half of my soul, and for a time there was no mystery, no peril that I could not face and succeed if you were with me. Our profile rose. As did the number and nature of cases which came our way. I almost itched for injury, if it meant I would feel the stern kindness of your hands as they seamed my cuts to make me stronger. I regretted it every time you snipped the thread away once I healed and pulled it free, because then I had no excuse to beg for your touch.

I was not one who had previously found comfort in physical intimacy of any sort before encountering you, but the need to have you closer and closer still became as much an obsession as anything that might have found its way into my veins via smoke, solution or powder. Perhaps something might have happened sooner had I found the courage to act, before the stars shifted and we found ourselves on different paths.

I could never bring myself to hate Mary, even though her arrival and your subsequent courtship would drive the first wedge between us; a true friend would never stand in the way of happiness of someone so dear to them, even if it resulted in a loss of daily contact. The utter joy which you shared with her on your wedding day warmed my soul, even whilst I was preparing myself for the increasing distance that would follow.. Marriage added a respectability to your status, in a way that our association could not. 

I truly wished you well, and to hear of her death from a yellowing snippet of the Times sent by Mycroft caused me much grief. I wanted to return at that very moment of discovery, to kneel at your feet and beg forgiveness, to explain why I had enacted that seemingly callous game of hide and seek. I hoped that you would understand.

I also hoped that you would believe me. That I would have taken another course if it had seemed at all possible. We might have had a few more hours together, but then all that we hold dear might have been taken from us. Baker Street, Mrs Hudson, Mary, and possibly all of our supporters at Scotland Yard. I had to drive Moriarty from this earth, and if the cost was to die alongside him, or at least appear so to do, it would have been a worthy sacrifice.

And it was imperative for me, at the every least, to appear to die, and for my remains to be lost to the summer floods. I took no joy in hearing your anguished cries, or to witness the frantic searches you duly undertook for my body once that of the damned professor was discovered, along with the henchmen who would have murdered all who stood in their way.

Mycroft knew the falsehood of it all, because he was the one person with the power and connections both to assist me and protect those whom had become important to me. The new tenants at 219 and 223 Baker Street; Lestrade’s newest recruit Constable Gaiman, and even Alice, the girl paid to clean your surgery, were all part of the Holmes network. All were trained to defend to the very end, if required. Thankfully, it never came to that.

\----

I returned a week before our encounter at your surgery; the temptation to find you before all the ends were safely tied was my greatest distraction. I watched, I listened, escorting you to and from home each day on the train, sitting three rows behind, walking through the shadows to avoid being seen. I feared to sleep in case you were taken from my sight. 

In the end, in all honesty, I expected you to knock me down for my betrayal and abandonment. I did not expect the colour to fade from your confused and unbelieving face, as though felled by the one assassin I knew to still be stalking me. My fingers scrabbled for your pulse, caring for neither dignity nor propriety.

Planets were born and destroyed in the minute and a half it took for you to return to me, blinking away tears and disbelief. My own fears dissolved in the comfort of your embrace, even if it was followed by your disapproval of my gaunt, unfed self. Your very presence healed me, a ridiculous scarecrow of a man worn to patches by three years of subterfuge and isolation. Your consulting room gave me the sanctuary that I needed for the final act of the battle against what remained of our greatest foe. Your eyes danced at the thought of a new adventure, even though I could only share the briefest of details with you. Your trust felt like armour.

My hatred of Colonel Moran stemmed from the way that he infiltrated your trust when you were at your most vulnerable. He never chose to understand the treasure of your loyalty and for that alone, I wanted to tighten the noose around his neck myself, counting the seconds until the weight of his guilt took him from this world. The pistol you never saw held bullets engraved with the names of his targets - Watson, Hudson, Lestrade. I needed to be sure that he would never use them. Cracking his skull against the floor of that empty house behind Baker Street was worth the injuries he caused me, if only to save you all.

\---

When my body betrayed me, I was thankful that your speed saved me from greater hurt. I woke here, clean and warm, my cuts and bruises dressed, in the nightshirt that I remembered taking to Switzerland. Embarrassment flooded your face in the instant that you realised.

You told your tale to the fire. “I could not bear even a scrap of you to be cast away as the effects of a man destroyed by his own foolhardiness. Your trunk was repacked and brought back to Undershaw, where Mary treated it with the same reverence as I did.”

Your face was painted with tears when you turned to me. “She held me together as I relearned the shapes of a life without you, and for a while I made some progress. But when the world saw fit to take her as well, just at the point that we would have welcomed a child- I was a ruined man. Mycroft is entirely responsible for ensuring that I didn’t end up destroyed by my own hand.”

At that point I would have given everything to rise from this bed and fold you into my arms, but it took all my strength to merely grasp your cuff. But it was enough to make you turn your head.

“I do not feel worthy of such care, after all that you have endured. But understand this, above all else, you are the very universe to me. My greatest wish is to be able to spend the rest of my life in your company, if you would consider giving space to a monster such as myself.”

His eyes flamed with incomprehension. “You are the greatest and the kindest of men. Your only fault is that you have never understood how much you are loved in general, and by me in particular.” His breath came in gulps, as if the words had blocked his very lips.

My fingers tightened their grip on him. “My dearest friend. Please come here…”

And so he did, bracketing my head with his arms, his elbows taking all the weight which he knew my ribs could not currently take. We lay there for uncountable moments, robbed of sufficient words, but relearning a fluency of touch.

His fingers traced a path through my hair, stopping when they found long-healed scars. “Before your time,“ I explained, “caused by the cruelty of unsupervised boys after dark.”

He leaned in and kissed the ridges, one by one. ”I trust their crimes did not go unpunished.”

I found the strength to smile despite the memory. “Mycroft and my father ensured that their applications to Oxford were diverted and appropriately amended so as to undermine their suitability for such opportunities.”

“Good.” 

A benediction, commanding me to sleep.

\----

Now I wake, in the smallest hours, to find that the dearest, most precious person in the world is enveloped in the same sheets, one arm carefully draped across me. London could fall into flames and rubble and I would find no inclination to leave this cocoon.

This, I know now, will never be something I can bring myself to regret, for all of the threats which we will have to face down in the world beyond.

All I need is to be found within these walls and within the embrace of this incredible man.

My first and my last.

My sanctuary, as I hope that I can be for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ed at lightning speed by redacted who is a world-class long-distance cheerleading. Thanks also go to redacted for showing such patience at my wibbling when I changed course on this as the deadline approached.


End file.
